I’ll say. They just somehow figured out how to buy-out homebrewers, the ultimate grassroots innovators of craft beer in the United States. Bravo by them.

This hits pretty close to home for me. I bought many of my early homebrew kits from Northern Brewer, and continued to buy equipment and ingredients from them from time to time over the past few years when I just wanted something dropped off at my door.

They have EVERYTHING a homebrewer could want. Their customer service is great. And they’re just cool. I can see why it was attractive for XYZ-AB to buy them.

While I appreciate the sentiment, when I read the statement from Chris Farley, Northern Brewer’s founder, about the acquisition, it sounded like every other statement put together by a corporate PR department, about how nothing will fundamentally change and they’ll still be independent.

That may be true to an extent as long as things are going well in the minds of the investors. As anyone who has ever accepted investment or taken out a loan, once you take that money you’re no longer the boss. I just wish one time, an executive would come out and say, “They made us a great offer and we had to take it. It’s a lot of money.”

Since I would like to be helpful to my future fellow brewery owners, in an effort to help breweries, brewpubs and homebrew shops save some time and money when they’re acquired, I went ahead and wrote a boilerplate press release they are welcome to use, Mad Libs-style:

Today, we at ______ are ______ to announce our acquisition and partnership with _______. This is a ______ moment in our company’s history, and we could not be more______ and ______ for all our employees that have helped us reach this moment after so many years of _________. We are so ______ at the prospects for future ________.

“Our new relationship with _______ will create _______ that will allow us to ______ and pursue _______ to better serve our customers with greater ________ and increased _______,” said ______, ________’s founder and president.

_______’s management team will remain in place and we will continue to be a ________ operation. Rest assured that our ______ and ______ will stay intact as we go forth.

________, CEO of ________ called the merger “______.”

We are confident that this merger is a ______/_______ for both our customers and our company. We thank all of our past customers for their _______, and we look forward to ________ing them for years to come.

The big news in craft beer these days is all about acquisitions. AB InBev acquired Goose Island in 2011 and followed that up with 10 Barrel, Blue Point, Elysian, Breckenridge, Devil’s Backbone, and Golden Road.

AB InBev also controls about 120+ other brands globally. Founders, Lagunitas, Terrapin, and Ballast Point recently sold a majority share of their breweries to other major corporate breweries.

This raises two important questions that are being debated throughout breweries and tap rooms everywhere:

What does all this consolidation mean for the future of craft beer?

Should a conscientious craft beer supporter continue to buy formerly craft brands after they’re acquired by one of the big guys?

I’m sure many of you are asking, “Why should I care about all this? Grapefruit Sculpin is the best beer I’ve ever had! I don’t want to give that up.” Grapefruit Sculpin is phenomenal, I can’t argue with that.

As the current trend of acquisitions continues, including AB InBev merging with SAB-Miller to create the brewing equivalent of The Empire, we’re going to find more and more scenes like this photo below at the Nationals Park, home of the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team:

(HINT: In the lower photo, check out the tap furthest to the right to uncover the one owner.)

Major brewing corporations are acquiring craft brands to present the “Illusion of Choice” to beer consumers. They can provide a wide variety of brands to their wholesalers, who in turn offer one-stop-shopping at a lower cost to bars, restaurants and venues. How many retailers really care enough about craft beer to pass up easy and cheap when it all looks just as good?

Why don’t the major corporations just brew their own “Kraft Killerz”? Why are they acquiring craft brands to expand their reach?

Do you remember Budweiser American Ale? For whatever reason, they just can’t seem to figure out how to create tasty beer on their own.

There’s also the marketing matter of brand association. Just like no one wants to buy a luxury version of a Toyota Camry, they’ll buy a Lexus ES 350, which is essentially the same as a Camry with more options.

To combat the meteoric rise of craft beer, Globobrewers can’t just create their own craft brands. They have to attack craft brewers by assimilating brands like the Borg, so they came up with this playbook, which I think is loosely based on Monty Python’s Wooden Rabbit.

Buy a majority share of a craft brewery that has shown tremendous growth in the past 24-36 months and wants to expand rapidly or cash in.

Rapidly scale up production of the craft brewery’s core brands.

Push out the core brands to far reaching regions using the behemoth’s established distribution network. (For example, we suddenly now get Elysian Space Dust in South Carolina.)

The reason that we should all care is that diversity and innovation are what led to the craft beer boom that started in the late oughts. Diversity in nature has countless benefits. The same can be said for language and culture. And beer.

Big beer, whose empire is built on light lager, can’t innovate on their own, so they seek to grow through acquisition. Growth through acquisition alone is not a sustainable business model.

By supporting independent breweries, you are supporting the innovators that fuel the creativity on the front lines of craft beer. You are creating jobs and putting money back in local communities throughout the country.

Small: Annual production of six million barrels of beer or less (approximately three percent of U.S. annual sales). Beer production is attributed to the rules of alternating proprietorships.

Independent: Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by a beverage alcohol industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.

Traditional: A brewer that has a majority of its total beverage alcohol volume in beers whose flavor derives from traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation. Flavored malt beverages (FMBs) are not considered beers.

In particular, supporting your own local breweries not only puts your money back into your community, when you visit their tasting rooms, you receive the added benefit of getting the freshest, best tasting beer you possibly could directly from the source.

Ultimately, the responsibility to meet the challenge of the big breweries lies with the indie brewers. Our beer has to be of the highest quality, consistently. I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay more for a beer that doesn’t taste good, no matter who made it.

I encourage you to stay informed of the changing craft beer landscape, and that when all other things are equal, choose local and independent.

One year ago today, our moving van rolled back into Greenville. Was it a triumphant return, or wounded retreat? I believe it’s the former.

Nicole and I spent two and a half awesome years in Tampa. I look back at that time with amazement at the opportunities we had. We did a lot of cool things and met so many great people. I hope that many of those relationships will remain in tact for years to come.

Most importantly, the move got me out of my comfort zone. I had lived in South Carolina from 1986 to 2013. You get into a routine when you are in the same place for nearly 30 years, and it takes a lot of internal motivation or excessive external force to change it.

Being away from family and long-time friends gave me an opportunity to start over and define a new identity that doesn’t come with decades of baggage. I saw clearly what I wanted to do and what I believe my purpose is.

I was able to get off my ass and start the journey.

So why did we come back? Being away also gave us a chance to look at Greenville from a new perspective. We realized it had so much that we really liked. It’s our speed. We felt we could plug back in, armed with new experiences, and contribute positively to a growing community.

It was not a retreat back to the familiar. It was an advance into new opportunity.

The past year has been remarkable. Greenville has changed more than we thought, I believe mostly for the good. There are growing pains, but I’d rather be a part of a vibrant city that outsiders look at and want to be a part of, rather than a stagnant or dying community.

We have met so many great new people since being back. We are so thankful for the acceptance and support we’ve received.

We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress on the brewery in just a year since being back. We’re close. We’re really close…

I’m excited to be back in Greenville. This is our home, and it feels good to be here. But don’t worry, I’m not letting myself get comfortable. That ship set sail three years ago, and there’s no going back to that.

Recently, the South Carolina Department of Revenue (SCDOR) and SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) began to strictly enforce a 20+ year-old state alcohol law that prohibits any producer of beer to sell beer, give free beer, or provide any service to a retailer.

Over the past couple decades, breweries have been donating beer directly to non-profits, festivals, special events and causes they believe in, not knowing that this is actually illegal in this state because it circumvents the wholesale layer in the three-tier-system.

While donated beer may be a small percentage of the total beer market, this does have a potentially large impact on non-profits, events, festivals, and in our case, start-up breweries. The change in enforcement comes about because SCDOR and SLED consider festivals and special events to be “retailers” and thus subject to the same three-tier-system regulations as stores, bars and restaurants.

Rather than try to explain all the details in this post, Brook Bristow, beverage lawyer and head of the South Carolina Brewer’s Guild, wrote a detailed blog post about the issue. If you run a business that sells alcohol, put on events, or care about craft beer, I highly recommend you read that post.

I will touch on what this means for Fireforge and other South Carolina breweries-in-planning in the foreseeable future.

Impact to a Start-up Small Business

Since Fireforge is not yet a licensed producer of beer, we cannot sell or distribute any of our beer through a wholesaler. (We could possibly contract brew at a licensed producer and distribute it that way, but that’s a story for another time.) Therefore, we can’t give away samples at beer festivals or special events, as all beer needs to be channeled through a wholesaler in South Carolina.

Prior to the change in the enforcement of this law, we were able to pour free samples at festivals, tastings and events as a homebrewer. I brew my beer at home, 10 gallons at a time on the same system I’ve had for the past six years.

I don’t sell my beer or get paid to brew it. However, giving away samples has been a tremendous marketing opportunity for us, allowing us to get our product in people’s hands to build a following prior to our opening.

By working to build a base of potential customers prior to opening, our goal is to have more than just our families in the Fireforge tasting room on opening day. Giving away our product builds our reputation and brand awareness so that we can hit the ground running from Day 1, rather than appearing out of nowhere on the craft beer scene as if we were dropped out of a spaceship.

Imagine the challenge of building a reputation from scratch and trying to get our first customers in the door while we’re already paying rent, utilities and employees. Those first few weeks and months are critical, and starting from zero on Day 1 shortens the runway. It could be perilous to a fledgling small business trying to break into in a very competitive market.

Giving away samples has also been extremely informative market research for us. We’ve been able to validate that people enjoy our beer and that we’re not completely insane for opening a brewery.

If we had not been pouring samples for the past couple years, I would never have guessed that some of our beers, such as Perlin’s Ghost Pepper Pale Ale, Tampanian Devil Guava Tripel and Sunshine of Your Love Cream Ale would have gotten the positive reaction they have.

The feedback we’ve received has been invaluable to know what people really like and what has gotten a lukewarm response. We can start off brewing beer that we already know people like.

The next state legislative session does not begin until January 10, 2017. In the mean time, the state’s craft brewers will be huddling up and planning which are the most pressing and realistic issues to address in the coming year.

We’ve made a lot of progress over the past decade for craft beer in South Carolina, thanks in large part to the support of craft beer fans mobilizing and letting their representatives know what’s important to them. We’ll continue to keep you updated on issues and bills that affect craft beer in our state.

What Does This Mean For Fireforge?

One of our favorite things to do is to serve our beer to people. It’s why we wanted to start a brewery in the first place. We are deeply saddened and frustrated that we do not have a legal outlet to allow people to sample our beer in a public venue.

There is the possibility that we could contract brew or collaborate with other breweries in the area to continue getting our name out there. We are developing some collaboration recipes in conjunction with other breweries and hope to brew those with our comrades soon. Contract brewing is a bit more complicated, and we’re evaluating whether it’s worth it for us to pursue that channel for just a few months before we open.

However, all this is just another challenge that we have the opportunity to overcome. Please continue to keep an eye on us, we’re not going anywhere and your support means so much to us.

Rest assured that we will continue to work our asses off and push as hard as we can to get this brewery open as quickly as possible. We’re making tremendous progress toward securing a location, and we’re getting close to our fundraising goal.

So stay tuned for more news over the coming months, and please continue to support your local breweries and other small businesses. Let’s make this community a wonderful place, fueled by diversity and innovation. We’ll see you around!

The Brewer’s Association recently released the 2015 craft beer sales data, which showed continued growth of the industry. Craft beer sales increased 12.8% by volume and 16% by dollar, marking the sixth straight year of double-digit growth. Craft beer now holds a 12.3% share of the overall beer market, which is at $105.9 billion in 2015. That’s a LOT of beer.

Brewing fear

Craft beer may have jumped the shark when Nicole and I make the front page with a brewery that doesn’t exist (yet).

617 breweries opened in the U.S. in 2015, bringing the total up to a record high of 4,225. Craft beer is receiving a ton of coverage in the news media. Hell, even Nicole and I somehow ended up on the front page of the Greenville News, and we technically don’t even exist yet!

With all this attention, and a new brewery seemingly opening up on every corner, it has many wondering if, or when, the craft beer bubble will burst.

In our journey to open Fireforge, we’ve had many prospective investors express concern over the number of breweries opening, along with limited shelf space in stores and taps in bars, and passed on us. I’ve lost track of the number of banks that told us they have financed enough breweries and their “portfolio is full in that industry.”

How many more craft breweries can the market support? Can craft beer continue to carve into Big Beer’s market share at a double-digit growth rate? These are billion dollar questions that no one has an answer for.

Perspective from the grassroots

What I can share is our experience as a start-up brewery in Greenville, SC. Everywhere we go and every event we attend, people practically beg us to open in their town. There aren’t enough new breweries to go around. Mauldin, Simpsonville, Greer, Fountain Inn, Pickens, Spartanburg, Easley, Clemson… People are thirsty, and they want a neighborhood brewery that they can call their own.

The Greenville area currently has six operating breweries: Thomas Creek, Quest, Brewery 85, Upstate Craft Beer, Shoeless Brewing and Swamp Rabbit Brewing. As far as I am aware of, there are five more in planning: Birds Fly South, 13 Stripes, Loose Reed, Blue Ridge Brewing (the resurrection in Greer) and Fireforge.

To put that in perspective, the Asheville area has over 20 operating breweries, with who knows how many in planning. Granted, Asheville has it’s own unique culture, very different from Greenville. However, they have roughly the same population. Greenville’s metropolitan area has 400,000 people and Asheville is at 420,000.

The closest beer market in South Carolina is Charleston, which has around 15 breweries and 15 or more in planning. Greenville, and the Upstate in particular, is far behind other areas in the region.

Every pro brewer I talk to tells me to go as big as possible. Expect to hit capacity early and be prepared to work your ass off to keep up with demand. And what we are seeing backs that up. Thomas Creek has added capacity in the past couple years. In Asheville, Burial, High Wire, Wicked Weed, Highland, and Green Man have recently added additional locations or made huge capacity expansions.

We have our work cut out for us

Obviously, by starting Fireforge, we’re betting the farm that there is still a lot of room for growth in craft beer. There is a tremendous amount of competition on a local, regional and national level. There is a finite amount of shelf space and taps in stores, bars and restaurants.

On the positive side, the biggest competitive advantage of local craft beer still holds true. Your local brewery can offer the freshest beer, the most variety and contributes directly back into your community. That will never change.

What we’re seeing in the more mature craft beer markets like Portland, Denver and San Diego is a return to the neighborhood brewery and tap room. We’ll eventually see that happen as well in the South.

We know we’re going to have to work hard to brew great beer and provide an amazing experience for our guests. We know the shakedown is coming down the road. Only the best will thrive, or even survive, based on the merit of their products and service. As it should be.

And we look forward to earning our place in the craft beer world and growing the pie for everyone.

EDIT:

I forgot to include Upstate Craft Beer and Shoeless Brewing in my original post listing current Greenville breweries. That was completely unintentional and has since been updated. Thanks, James, for bringing that to my attention!

In a little over a week, June 6 will mark the two-year anniversary of my opening Google Docs and creating the file that would become the Fireforge Crafted Beer business plan.

It began as Croxbone Brewing Company. I was in Tampa, Florida. If you had told me on that day in 2014 that in two years I would be typing this blog post while on my porch back in Greenville, South Carolina, the company name would now be Fireforge, LLC and we’re still a minimum of six months from opening, I’m not sure if I would have been excited or if I would have stopped before typing the first word in the document.

It’s been an educational, scary, exciting, frustrating and joyful journey. Sometimes you’re better off not knowing everything that will happen along the way before you take that first step.

While I would have loved to have completed our fundraising, found our building and been open 12 months ago, I realize now we wouldn’t have been ready. Everything happens for a reason, and we needed to learn a lot more before we opened. It will vastly increase our chances of success in the long run.

The obstacles and detours also test your passion, determination, commitment and belief in what you’re doing. We will face greater challenges than these once we are up and running, and if it came too easily at the beginning, we would not be hardened in our resolve to make it work no matter what. It would be too easy to quit when things seem hopeless.

The biggest lesson that I’ve learned in this process is that anything worthwhile cannot be done alone. I’m the oldest child in my family, fiercely independent, stubborn and a perfectionist. For most of my life, if I couldn’t do something perfectly by myself, I wouldn’t do it.

Running a business by yourself is not sustainable in any industry. Even though Fireforge has no employees right now, we’ve been blessed to have a great team of professionals that has supported us to get to this point. I’ve had the opportunity to work with and learn from accountants, attorneys, real estate brokers, architects, engineers, city officials, brewers, business owners, designers, programmers, printers, chefs, farmers, musicians, blacksmiths, bankers and event planners.

There are dark days, when I question if it’s worth it, I feel like I don’t know shit about anything, and wonder why I quit my job five months ago.

But it’s been totally worth it. It’s been the most enriching experience of my life, and I couldn’t imagine what I would be doing if it wasn’t this. In the immortal words of John Elway, “There is no Plan B, we’re going with Plan A!”

Thank you to everyone that’s helped us and supported Fireforge. We’ve come so far in two years, and we’re so close. I can’t wait to pour you a pint.

Coming up on Thursday, May 8, we’ll be releasing our Batch #2 brewed at the Brewer’s Tasting Room. In collaboration with our friends Mike Shea and Silvana Capaldi, we brewed an Irish Red in homage to Mike’s Irish heritage.

We couldn’t keep it totally to style and still respect ourselves in the morning, so we added tupelo honey to give it a Florida twist. It’s a clean, malty ale with a dry finish. The honey comes through as a nice accent. It’s at 7.1% ABV, so it’ll pack the punch of Jack Dempsey.

The tapping will take place at 7 pm. We need your support to help us set the house record and kick both kegs that night.